Discipline and co-operation

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As babies become toddlers, many parents begin to think and talk about discipline. No wonder: your baby learns to do a lot, and not all of it is what you'd choose.

The months around the first birthday

Your nearly-mobile, nearly-talking baby is certainly capable of understanding what "no" means, and of beginning to co-operate with adults, even (sometimes) when she doesn't actually want to. But she isn't ready to cope with adult anger when she doesn't co-operate because the reasons for the anger are beyond her understanding -- it seems to her to gather out of nothing: an act of god; a thunderbolt.

Your toddler has no way of knowing that the thing she did or that just happened -- milk down your clean shirt, a briefcase emptied out -- was the one more minor disaster that was your "last straw". Even if she had sensed your previous tension, she would not have understood what caused it: the failed alarm call that left you late in getting up, late in getting her up, late getting off to daycare and work. She doesn't understand much about your feelings or your affairs, nor should she. They are not yet her concern. If you scold, she may enrage you further by laughing; if you shout, she will jump and cry. If you lose your cool to a point where you actually punish her physically, shaking her, smacking her or dumping her in her cot, she will be as amazed and horrified as you would be if the family dog suddenly turned on you and took a chunk out of your leg. Until the reasons for adult anger become comprehensible, your toddler cannot learn anything useful from punishment. When the reasons do become comprehensible, she will be able to learn without punishment.

Suppose your child pulls a vase off the coffee table and breaks it. You may justify your angry scolding on the grounds that she should not have touched it because you have told her not to many times -- and anyway she should have been more careful. But think a minute. She touched the vase because it was there: her vital curiosity told her to examine it and her memory and understanding are not yet good enough to tell her which things are forbidden. She broke it because her manual dexterity is not yet adequate for handling delicate things gently. So was the accident really her fault? If the vase was really valuable, what was it doing left within her reach? She is being punished for being what she is. A baby.

Now suppose that she tips all the food out of her dish on to the freshly-washed floor. In fury you say that "she ought to know better". But ought she? A few minutes earlier you helped her to tip all the bricks out of their bag onto the floor. Is she supposed to share your ideas about the difference between food and toys? As to the clean floor, she probably watched you sloshing bubbly water over it. Is she supposed to understand that soapy water cleans things, but gravy dirties them? Once again you are being cross with her for being the age she is and for behaving as people in her age bracket are meant to behave.

Whatever other people may sometimes suggest, going gently with a baby this age cannot "spoil" her or create behaviour problems for later. In fact the more consciously you love her, and enjoy the way she loves you, the better. If you let yourselves realise and reciprocate her inexhaustible desire for smiles and hugs, it will be obvious that the last thing she wants is to displease you. It will be a long time yet before she can understand what pleases you, though. Your pleasures are not the same as hers. You don't like gravy on the floor....

From one year to two-and-a-half

During these months, your child's developmental clock tells him that it is time to stop being a baby and move towards being a separate person. If you treat him as a baby, he will fight you every step of the way and, in the end, he will win his independence because he must. But he will win it at a terrible price paid in lost love.

But that clock does not yet read "childhood", so attempts to manage and discipline him as you would a child will not work either. You will be faced with a lack of comprehension that looks like defiance, and every battle you join will end with love lost. So don't try for absolute control and don't join moral battles. Your toddler will be "good" if he feels like doing what you happen to want him to do and does not happen to feel like doing anything you would dislike. With a little cleverness you can organise life as a whole, and issues in particular, so that you both want the same thing most of the time.

Your toddler has his bricks all over the floor and you want the room tidy. If you tell him to pick them up, he will probably refuse. If you insist, a fight will be on and you cannot win it. You can yell at him, punish him, reduce him to a jelly of misery but none of that will get those bricks off the floor. But if you say, "I bet you can't put those bricks in their bag before I've picked up all these books", you turn a chore into a game, an order into a challenge. Now he wants to do what you want him to do, so he does. He did not pick up (most of) the bricks "for Mummy"; he did not do it because he is a "good boy". He did it because you made him want to. And that is the best possible way to go. Conduct your toddler through his daily life by foreseeing the rocks and steering around them, avoiding absolute orders that will be absolutely refused, leading and guiding him into behaving as you want him to behave because nothing has made him want to behave otherwise.

The payoff now is fun instead of strife for you all but the later payoff is seriously important, too. This toddler, who does not know right from wrong and therefore cannot choose to behave well or badly, is growing up. Soon the time will come when he does remember your instructions and foresee the results of his actions; does understand the subtleties of everyday language; does recognise your feelings and your rights.

When that time comes, your child will be able to be "good" or "naughty" on purpose. Which he chooses will depend largely on how he feels about the adults who are special to him and have power over him. If he reaches that next stage of growing up feeling that you are basically loving, approving and on his side, he will want (most of the time) to please you so (with many lapses) he will behave as you wish.

But if he reaches that stage feeling that you are overpowering, incomprehensible and against him, he may already have decided not to bother trying to please you because you are never pleased; not to let himself mind when you are cross because you are cross so often; not to expose the depth of his loving feelings for you because you have not always seemed to reciprocate.

If you ever wonder whether you are being too gentle and accepting with your toddler, or anyone ever suggests that it is time to toughen up, look ahead. If your child reaches preschool age no longer seeking your approval, not feeling cooperative, not confident of loving and being loved, you will have lost the basis for easy, effective "discipline" all through childhood. At this in-between toddler stage, a happy child is an easy child. A child kept easy now will be easy to handle later.

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Thank you for your article, I'm a first time mum so I always feel like I'm not doing enough to be a good mother, after reading this I am happy to say that I'm not doing such a bad job. There are improvements to be made obviously, but I now know what they are, growing up my mother was extremely strict and I'm trying not to be the same.

Thanks a lot for this article. I feel really guilty now that I know I've been doing the wrong thing- trying to correct my toddler by ignoring, scolding, and punishing him. Nothing can take back those harsh words.
You spoke to my heart with this article.

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